Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Norman Vincent Peale’s Top 10 Positive Pearls of Wisdom


Focus on today.

“Don’t take tomorrow to bed with you.” - Norman Vincent Peale

Focus on today by building “a habit of spending more time in the present and less time in imagined future scenarios or old memories.” You would probably be in shock if you were ever to take stock of how much time you spend daily daydreaming, fretting over things you can’t change and thinking about tomorrow. We all do it, the key is to be conscious of when you are doing it so that you can stop it and return back to the present. You may also “…do this through things like focusing on your breathing or on your inner body.”

Don’t go too fast.

“To go fast, row slowly.” - Norman Vincent Peale

This is such an Achilles heel especially for young men who want to conquer the world. They go at a million miles an hour trying to out achieve their compatriots. “It’s tempting to go fast…you may be tempted to grab on to the next big idea, the next “magic pill”, instead of steadily keep going on your current path. To actually get where you want to go a slower pace may be more useful and effective than a hurried and quick pace.”

While on the surface it seems counter intuitive to go slower if you want to progress faster, there is a ring of truth to the time old fable of the rabbit and the hare. We know that those who keep a constant state of progress done within their limits often achieve greater success and sustain it for longer periods of time than those who burst out of the blocks sprinting only to run out of juice before ever reaching the finish line.

Learn not only from your mistakes.

“We’ve all heard that we have to learn from our mistakes, but I think it’s more important to learn from successes. If you learn only from your mistakes, you are inclined to learn only errors.” - Norman Vincent Peale

“Our mistakes are interesting because they can often teach us something valuable if we just take a closer look at what happened. But, of course, the successes are really useful to analyze too…It is here we can find perhaps a crucial detail or something that we did that we missed the other 10 times we tried.” Success goes to those who are willing to pause and reflect on the successes and failures that have gotten them there. It is only through careful and meticulous reflection on one’s progress that you find what is working and what isn’t. To repeat what doesn’t work over and over again is just an exercise in mediocrity.

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